A youtube.com channel using your name, photograph and branding is impersonation, and that report asks about identity rather than ownership. It applies even when the videos on the channel are not yours, which is the case a copyright claim cannot reach at all.
Left up, 40 exposed copies work out to an estimated $234 a month in diverted subscriptions. Estimate, not a measurement: it assumes 0.45 diverted subscribers per exposed post at an average subscription price of $12.99. Your number depends on your pricing and audience.
Removal route for youtube.com
Resolved live · no account · nothing uploaded
A notice for youtube.com goes to a curated route openDMCA already holds.
2 · RDAP abuse contact— resolves.abusecomplaints@markmonitor.com — the registrar's abuse desk, not youtube.com itself. Probed 2026-09-04.
3 · Fallback address— not needed.Not needed — an earlier rung resolved.
4 · Network and search— runs next.Cloudflare detection over DNS-over-HTTPS, then Google and Bing delisting of every indexed youtube.com URL.
What happens to what you type: nothing. The domain is matched against openDMCA's routing table in your browser. No request is made to youtube.com, no page is fetched, and the text is not stored or sent anywhere.
Removal route demo for youtube.com, impersonation job.
Step by step
Capture the channel, not one video. Record the youtube.com channel URL, its name, its avatar and several uploads, with dates. An impersonation report is about how the channel presents itself as a whole.
Have your own channel URL ready. The youtube.com impersonation route expects the channel being copied. Preparing that before opening the form is what turns an abandoned attempt into a complete submission.
File the impersonation report. Use the youtube.com impersonation route, which openDMCA holds as a curated form expecting your name, your channel URL and the impersonating URL.
File copyright separately where your videos are used. Where the channel uploads material you made, the copyright route applies in addition and reaches a different process. Both are worth filing.
Delist the channel URL afterwards. A youtube.com channel URL stays indexed after the channel is gone, still carrying your name. Where it returns in a search, submit it for delisting as its own request.
Why impersonation is a separate route on youtube.com
Copyright asks who owns a work; impersonation asks who a channel is claiming to be. A creator whose name and photograph front someone else's uploads fails the first question and passes the second.
openDMCA stores the youtube.com impersonation route as a form with its field list rather than as an address, which is what routes an identity case to a process that can act on identity.
openDMCA gives the first two hops away: you can open the copyright-or-NCII decision tree and run it on a URL of your own, with no account and nothing uploaded.
One thing that catches people out on youtube.com
A youtube.com channel impersonating a creator inherits her name in its URL, its title and its search description at once, which is why the channel page frequently outranks her real one for her own name. The impersonation report addresses the channel and the delisting request addresses the search result, and neither one does the other's job.
Frequently asked questions
The channel uses my name but not my videos.
That is impersonation rather than copyright, and the impersonation route applies. A copyright report fails because nothing of yours is being copied.
What if the fake channel outranks mine?
That is common, because a channel built around your name is optimised for it. The impersonation report and a delisting request for the channel URL address different halves of that.
Do I need my own channel to report?
The route expects one as evidence of the identity being copied. Establishing identity another way may be possible, and openDMCA does not give legal advice about it.
Work out which route your case belongs in — free, no account.